Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore’s 16th Annual Virtual Celebrating Words Festival!

All are invited to Tía Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore's 16th annual Celebrating Words Festival on May 28, 29 and 30. As we emerge from a pandemic imposed isolation, Tía Chucha's will provide a space for connection that supports the mental health and well-being of our community. This year's festival will feature immersive virtual programming and a drive-thru experience focused on using the arts, literacy, and ancestral teachings as viable ways of healing and transformation. This festival is Tía Chucha's offering to you as our community, an offering that we hope inspires you to expand your imagination, healing, and consciousness.

Virtual Programming: May 28, 2021, from 5 pm – 10 pm, and May 29, 2021, from 12 pm – 10 pm.

Book Drive-Thru Experience: May 30, 2021, from 11 am – 3 pm at Vaughn G3 Learning Academy, 11200 Herrick Ave. Pacoima, CA.

Live Events

Check out all of the events will be live streamed on Tía Chucha's YouTube Channel and Facebook. Make sure to follow and subscribe! No registration required. For a complete schedule, visit this link.

About Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore

The Northeast San Fernando Valley has a population of about 500,000 – the size of the city of Oakland – yet it had no bookstores, art galleries, or full-fledged cultural spaces until Tía Chucha's opened its doors in 2001. Thankfully, various local organizations have for decades provided services to address the many survival needs of a large number of economically insecure families and individuals in this area. Believing that it is also everyone’s right to explore and develop their innate creative gifts, Tia Chucha’s founders set out to correct the historic absence of life-enhancing artistic and literary options for this sector of the population. Melding vision with conviction, Tia Chucha’s was created as a space to embrace the equally important artistic development of our lives as human beings.

Tia Chucha’s began as a café, bookstore and cultural space owned and run by Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez, his wife Trini, and their brother-in-law Enrique Sanchez. In 2003 Luis, along with singer/musicologist Angelica Loa Perez and Xicano Rap artist Victor Mendoza established a next-door sister nonprofit to incorporate a full range of arts workshops. When in 2007 the cultural café and bookstore disbanded as an LLC, it donated its assets, including inventory, shelves, equipment, and more to the nonprofit to carry its mission forward.

Tia Chucha’s cultural center now provides year-round on-site and off-site free or low-cost arts and literacy bilingual intergenerational programming in mural painting, music, dance, writing, visual arts, healing arts sessions (such as reiki healing) and healing/talking circles. Workshops and activities also include Mexica ("Aztec") dance, indigenous cosmology/philosophy, and two weekly open mic nights (one in Spanish, the other in English). It also hosts author readings, film screenings, and art exhibits as well.